1 Brigham Young’s Teachings on Adam Matthew B. Brown Delivered at the 2009 FAIR Conference, Sandy, Utah. On the 9th of April 1852 President Brigham Young stepped up to the pulpit in the old tabernacle on Temple Square and informed a group of Elders, who had gathered there for General Conference, that he was going to straighten them out on an issue which they had been debating about. The topic of disagreement centered upon who was the Father of Jesus Christ in the flesh—Elohim or the Holy Ghost. 1 President Young surprised the people who were in attendance by announcing that it was neither one of them. He said, Now hear it, O inhabitants of the earth, Jew and Gentile, Saint and sinner! When our father Adam came into the Garden of Eden he came into it with a celestial body and brought Eve, one of his wives, with him. He helped to make and organize this world. He is Michael, the archangel, the ‘Ancient of Days’ . . . . He is our Father and our God, and the only God with whom we have to do. . . . When the Virgin Mary conceived the child Jesus, the Father had begotten Him in His own likeness. He was not begotten by the Holy Ghost. And who is the Father? He is the first of the human family; and when he took a tabernacle it was begotten by his Father in heaven . . . from the fruits of the earth the first earthly tabernacles were originated by the Father . . . . Jesus, our elder brother, was begotten in the flesh by the same character [who] was in the Garden of Eden, and who is our Father in heaven. Now, let all who may hear these doctrines pause before they make light of them or treat them with indifference, for they will prove their salvation or damnation. I have given you a few leading items upon this subject, but a great deal more remains to be told. These statements were published soon afterward in the Church’s newspaper in England 2 and also in the periodical called the Journal of Discourses . 3 Brigham Young repeated these ideas and expounded upon them during the next 25 years. His viewpoints have been variously classified as doctrine, theory, paradox, heresy, speculation, and some of the mysteries. For the purposes of this paper I have decided to collectively label them as ‘teachings’ because I believe that they embody characteristics of all of the categories just mentioned. There is a considerable amount of mythology that has arisen around Brigham Young’s Adam-God teachings, among critics and Latter-day Saints alike. The purpose of this paper is to